It's Labor Day weekend-three days of family obligations and hectic travel! How do you make it bearable? Pick up some new gear, of course. Here are a couple of recent products you could use to enhance your weekend.

Manhattan Gas BBQ Grill:
This might be your last opportunity to grill until the spring, so you might as well make it memorable with a new man-stove. For a mere $512, you can pick up the Manhattan Gas BBQ Grill. It features a wooden counter top, built-in storage, and an "infinitely" adjustable burner, which should mean that you can crank it up hot enough to melt the griddle. Sadly, it just refers to the analog adjustment knob and its lack of presets. Sigh. It's purdy, too, snagging a 2010 Reddot Design Award. [Labamo via Bornrich]

Advertisement

Steak Station:

Your grill's all fired up and it's time to throw on the steaks. But each one of your annoying relatives likes theirs done a different way. You can either mandate that everyone in your back yard eats rare steak, or be accomodating. The Steak Station has four probes that each take an individual measurement of your meat's done-ness. Now, you can make sure every carnivorous man-beast is satisfied with their share, and your wife is pleased with her well done slab of leather. You can pick up the Steak Station for $29.95 on Amazon. [Uncrate and Amazon]

If you're the type that's directionally challenged, check out Garmin's nüvi 3790T, which was released earlier this summer. It's an in-car personal navigation system that features a capacitive touch 4.3" glass screen, a built-in accelerometer, and 3D terrain views (which could be helpful if you're driving a clunker that has difficulty chugging up steep mountain slopes). It's been getting good reviews, and for the price (a substantial investment of $450), I would hope so. [Garmin via GPS Tracklog]

Kiwi Wifi and Bluetooth:

Gas is still ass-kickingly expensive in most parts of the country, so Kiwi came out with two new apps to help you maximize efficiency on your roadtrips. By plugging into your OBD2 port, Kiwi Wifi (for iDevices) and Bluetooth (for Android) are able to take direct measurements of how your driving affects your gas efficiency. Now you can test out for yourself how much worse speeding down the highway at 95 is for your MPG over hobbling along at the speed limit. [PLX Kiwi]